Mumbai man falls for liking YouTube videos to earn money scam, loses Rs 8.5 lakh

Mangalore Today News Network

Mumbai, May 24, 2023: A lot of cases have been reported in the last few months where people were being tricked by fraudsters into depositing money in different accounts. In most cases, the victims received a ’part time job offer’ which required them to like some YouTube videos to earn money. The fraudsters would at first deposit some money in the victim’s account to earn their trust. Once the victim starts trusting the scammer, they would move on to tasks involving large sums of money. Many people have lost their hard-earned money this way and the latest victim of this scam is a man based in Andheri, Mumbai.

 

According to a report by Indian Express, fraudsters approached the Mumbai-based man with a job offer in which all he had to do was like YouTube videos. A woman had approached the man with the job offer in the first week of May with the promise of paying Rs 3,000 to 6,000 per day. The report also said that in order to convince the victim of the ’job offer’s’ authenticity, the woman told the victim that her company was into advertisements and that he would have to like the company’s ads on YouTube to earn money.

At first, the tasks involved small sums of money and the victim received these small amounts multiple times in his bank account. Because of regular payment, the victim started trusting the scammer. Eventually, he was added to some groups on Telegram and was told that his money would be deposited in his ’virtual account’. This ’virtual account’ was a sham set up by the scammers to trick the man into believing that he was actually getting paid via the account.

The victim then began getting high-paying tasks and was added to certain ’VIP task groups’, the police told Indian Express. However, when he said that he wanted to leave the group, he wasn’t allowed to do so and was given a new task that involved a much larger amount.

“When he was asked to complete the next task with a much larger amount, he objected to it and demanded his money be transferred to his bank account. He was told that if he leaves the task halfway, then his money would be deducted by half,” a police officer told the publication.

The man realised that he was being tricked when he was asked to transfer Rs 2.5 lakh for a task, the report revealed. In this way, he ended up losing a total sum of Rs 8.59 lakh.